RONNIE CROCKER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE |
February 18, 2011

The Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispensing System works by filling beer from the bottom, then sealing the metal-lined hole with a magnet.

Josh Springer may have solved the sports fan’s dilemma: Should I get a beer or go to the bathroom if I want to be back in my seat before the action resumes? His invention, the Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispensing System, makes it easier to do both by drastically cutting the time it takes to pour and pay for a brew. After a YouTube video that’s been viewed more than 4 million times and an NFL debut that helped the Jacksonville Jaguars set beer-sales records in a year of poor attendance, Springer’s company has signed an exclusive advertising deal with Anheuser-Busch InBev and is preparing to grow exponentially in 2011. “We get calls from all over the world daily,” the 28-year-old inventor said by telephone from his home base near Olympia, Wash. “Apparently, you have to wait for a beer all over the world.” Bottoms Up will make its Houston debut at Discovery Green the first weekend in April, during festivities related to the NCAA Final Four. Alison Birdwell, general manager for Aramark at Reliant Park, said one or two of the dispensers will be operating at Texans games next fall. She said the concessionaire also plans to install one or two at Minute Maid Park, although not in time for the Astros’ opening day. Inspiration struck three years ago at a birthday dinner for his dad, Springer said, when he quieted the table and announced to a skeptical family that he thought he could fill a beer glass from the bottom. Four days later, he’d developed a prototype of a machine that would pump beer through a metal-ringed hole in the bottom of a plastic cup. A magnet covering the hole would then snap back into place. He estimates the process is nine times as fast as a traditional draft system. It also eliminates excessive foaming. “It’s gentler on the beer,” he said.

Successful test runs

By May 2009, Springer had patents pending and his own company, GrinOn Industries. He took a working version of the system to a stadium in Las Vegas for a Supercross finals event, where the Bottoms Up stand outsold the traditional stand by 80 percent. “We literally ran the stadium out of draft beer,” he said. That was followed by successful test runs elsewhere, including Boston’s Fenway Park. When he found it difficult to convince executives that he had a serious product, he built a portable demo unit that he’d roll up to a secretary’s desk. It always captured the lobby’s full attention. Getting into the Jacksonville, Fla., NFL stadium for the 2009 season was yet another big step. About a year later, Springer met some representatives from A-B InBev, the Belgium-based behemoth that owns the Budweiser and Bud Light brands. The company signed a contract for exclusive malt-beverage advertising on the bottom-of-the-cup magnets. GrinOn is a private company, and Springer declined to discuss the size of that contract or other financial details. But he said he expects to increase the number of Bottoms Up dispensers in the marketplace from around 70 today to between 1,000 and 1,500 by year’s end. The units, which can be retrofitted to existing keg or draft-line systems, sell for $3,000 to $3,400 apiece for a four-nozzle system, and $2,000 to $2,300 apiece for two nozzles.

Tweaking the design

Springer’s company also manufactures the cups, and acknowledged that the current flat-bottom design means the seals can leak when poked. He said that by early June the company will have changed over to cups with a recessed bottom that should solve that problem. He also encourages teams to sell advertising space on the flip side of the metal rings, to lower the per-unit cost. Some already are making money on the cups that way. In a videotaped test, Grin­On employees were able to fill 56 beers in one minute. The company plans to add CO2 regulators that could allow up to 70 fills per minute. Springer said it might be difficult for servers to match that record during an event, but he insisted that vendors can boost sales by “hundreds of dollars a minute” with the same number of staff.

New spectator sport

Michael Scippa of the California-based Marin Institute, which advocates for responsible advertising and pricing by major breweries, said the group would be concerned if vendors become so focused on speed that they don’t adequately check for minors or inebriated patrons. Otherwise, Scrippa said, it would be difficult to argue against a business efficiency. He raised only a broader issue. “The idea that alcohol and sports go hand-in-hand is something we are very much concerned about,” he said. Yet watching the machine in action can be a spectator sport itself, as the 4 million-plus YouTube views of the Bottoms Up video attest. “We get people telling us they missed the first half of the game,” said Springer, “because they were so busy watching the beer.” ronnie.crocker@chron.com